Standing up to evolution in Russia

Darwinism has left a bloody legacy in Russia over the last century through the communist regimes
of Lenin and Stalin. Though Russia, since the breakup of the USSR in 1991, has released
itself from the atheistic dogma of Marxism, the pseudoscientific justification for
Marxism, evolution, remains entrenched in the people’s thinking. However,
Maria Shraiber, a high school student from St Petersberg, is sueing Russian education
authorities over the compulsory teaching of evolution to the exclusion of other
viewpoints in her science classes.1

Her father, Kirill Shraiber, who is prosecuting the case on behalf of his daughter,
said that the point of the case was not to stop the teaching of evolution but to
give schoolchildren the right to study other theories on the origin of life.2 The Russian Orthodox Church has also
come out in support of the case with Rev. Artemy Skripkin, head of the youth department
of the St. Petersburg patriarchate, attending the hearings to support the case.3

The court case revolves around the standard biology textbook used in Russian high
schools, which has derogatory remarks about creation and theism. Maria Shraiber
has claimed it offends her religion and prohibits her free choice of religion. One
of the textbook’s authors, Sergei Mamontov, has defended the textbook and
the curriculum. He said that religion has no place in the science classroom because
‘you can’t prove [religion] … you just have to believe in [it].’3
However, these statements contain two basic flaws, (1) you can’t ‘prove’
a scientific theory either, you can only falsify it, and (2) it implies that any
religion is based on blind faith, which is not the case. Biblical faith
involves evidence.4

More importantly, these statements serve to divide ‘science’ (read:
evolution) and ‘religion’ (read: blind faith). However, this is a self-serving
distinction made by evolutionists that
even some evolutionists admit is false. The proper distinction to be made
in science is between operational science and origins science. Both creation and
evolution fall into origins (or historical) science but have different starting
points, or axioms, from which they then interpret the evidence. However, the Bible
provides the only coherent
starting point for understanding the world.

It requires blind faith to believe that things ‘so complex’ could have
evolved once, let alone twice or more.

Predictably, a letter to Nature5
describes the Shraibers’ case as akin to ‘militant fundamentalism’.
Notably, this is in stark contrast to many other news reports on the Shraibers’
case.1,2,3

The writers of the Nature letter push the same fallacious science/religion
divide as Mamontov, but they don’t stop there. They seek to distance Darwinism
from official Soviet ideology, yet say ‘we are aware of the strong tradition
in evolutionary biology in Russia, where prominent scholars did important work throughout
the twentieth century’. While the authors seem aware that the old Soviet ideology
caused a lot of senseless suffering, they appear to view it as the lesser of two
evils when compared to creationism:

‘Maybe we are now seeing the delayed effects of 70 years of enforced atheism
and official support for darwinism in the Soviet Union, which kept creationism at
bay until its collapse in 1991 [emphasis added].’

Militant anti-creationism makes for interesting bedfellows.

We are not aware of the religious background of the Shraibers, but they have made
it very clear that they’re not seeking to suppress evolution but request that
other origin theories get a hearing alongside evolution in the science classroom.

This is commendable, and we encourage this sort of thinking because comparing evolution
and creation, when properly understood from the Bible, will expose evolution for
what it truly is, false. Moreover, we have a biblical mandate to carry out such
investigation: ‘Examine everything; hold to what is good’ (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

Update: The St Petersburg court dismissed the Shraibers' case on 21 February 2007. They intend to appeal.